Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Digging for Water

Our water project in Bugesera, Rwanda is developing and after a realization that some projects will benefit from experienced advisors, we are collecting advice and a volunteer engineer to help with the project. I'm getting to learn a lot more about the necessary steps and cautionary points in digging a water well!

We're going to have a Rwandan Engineer with experience in well construction, and who is currently working for UNICEF, to help develop the project plans for both the water tank and water well and supervise and support the construction of both. There will be a community member responsible for tracking and reporting progress at each site and a woman supervisor from the community (whose husband is not involved in the project) who will supervisor both sites.

Unfortunately access to clean water is a major problem plaguing many in the developing world. Thankfully there are many people working tirelessly to change this. With more well projects being implemented, people are learning better ways to do it and more people are gaining experiences of how to do it. Water Aid has done a nice job keeping information about water pumps online for open sharing of experiences, planning and technology. The New York Times recently ran a number of posts from a professor of science and technology on access to clean water in Rwanda! Their links are below. I'll post more on our own project when it starts within the next few weeks.